


hypothetically

by jabbberwockys



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, F/M, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Order Member Draco Malfoy, Romance, War Era, but not that many, do not copy to another site please!, some mentions of death, this diverges from the books super early like fifth year early
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-18 16:27:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28995219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jabbberwockys/pseuds/jabbberwockys
Summary: “That Christmas holiday,” he says, not bothering to give back the personal space he’s just invaded. “Four? Five? Years ago. When you took me out in Muggle London to the fair for the first time.”
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 17
Kudos: 69





	hypothetically

**Author's Note:**

> my first fanfic ever! it's a little bit everywhere, and unbetaed. please forgive all the plot holes--i started writing this with literally no plot in mind and just made it up as i went. just a one-shot, but let me know your thoughts!

At the sound of soft footsteps behind her, Hermione sets aside the album of photographs, overflowing in her hands. “Again?” Draco asks, smile filled with a soft sort of irony.

Hermione sighs, shuffling the pages of the album together and aligning its spine to sit closed properly. She’d gotten as far as fourth year, tonight, on what has become a nearly nightly crusade to relieve her tired heart of the constant death of the dragging war. “Do you ever wish it could’ve been easier for us?” Hermione asks back. She’s been meaning to ask this question for weeks. “I look at the photos, and I just— ”

It’s hard to put into words what she feels, but Draco understands. He thinks about it often, too: a childhood without pureblood etiquette lessons, an upbringing without blood prejudice, a family without allegiance to a dark lord.

“Sure,” he says, which he knows Hermione knows really means _all the time._ “Like we could just _evanesco_ the bad memories and _accio_ the happy ones to make up for it.”

Leave it to Draco to find an elegant magical metaphor for it, Hermione thinks, smiling despite herself. “Which one would you _accio_ first?” she asks. “Hypothetically.”

Draco hums, nudging her forward to slip a leg behind her back and let her lean against the frame of his larger body. As he thinks, Hermione watches the light from the fireplace flicker across his face and jacket, carving the sharp lines of his jaw into nearly painfully lovely relief one moment and softening the litany of tiny scars left by his old Death Eater mask across his cheeks into a roughly healing pattern the next. It’s been six years since Draco’s defection, four years since the Hogwarts graduation they never attended, and over two years since their relationship has become _this,_ but Hermione is quite certain that she’ll never grow tired of staring a little too obviously for a little too long at the person she loves. 

Especially when he smiles, she adds to her internal monologue, as his lips quirk upwards (fucking _beautiful,_ she thinks) and he leans forward, catching her shoulders with one arm and her mouth with his own. “That Christmas holiday,” he says, not bothering to give back the personal space he’s just invaded. “Four? Five? Years ago. When you took me out in Muggle London to the fair for the first time.”

Hermione’s train of thought comes to an abrupt halt and she looks at him — really looks at him, not just admires his face. “Seriously?” she asks. 

The outing had been several days before Molly Weasley’s official annual Christmas dinner. Draco had come to her months earlier, shoulders caving in on an apology even he knew was weak at best. “He killed my father, and then he killed my mother,” Draco had said. “He killed my _mother._ And he was going to kill me, and all I could think about was how he wasn’t supposed to touch us if we were a pureblood.” She still remembers his eyes, exhausted wrinkles in the corners, purple bags beneath, and absolute lifelessness in the dull grey pupils.

“I guess it’s shitty of me to have only realized the bigotry then,” he’d continued, back then. “I guess I thought he wouldn’t lie to us, because he was our lord. I guess I thought my father couldn’t lie to me, because he was my father. But I didn’t know anything about muggles, you know? I’d never even seen one before. Never heard anything about muggles that wasn’t from _them._ I was just a boy.”

His voice broke, and they both knew that they had all _just been children._

“I don’t want anything to do with them anymore,” he’d said. “And I’m sorry. About— ” he waved his hands, like words weren’t enough, and at least here, Hermione had agreed. Words wouldn’t ever come close to covering the torment he’d orchestrated, rejection based on her outsider status being the only thing she’d ever secretly been afraid of when coming to Hogwarts. “About everything,” he’d finally settled, remarkably pathetically. “I don’t expect you to forgive me. But I’d like to learn— ”

There, he’d looked away, like the words were costing him something physical within his body. “I’d like to learn about muggles,” he said, quieter, and those words would probably be the most out-of-character thing Hermione would ever witness from him in her lifetime. “I’m tired of the deceit. Slytherin ruined my mother, and she was everything I had left. Slytherin was going to ruin _me._ We were all the same, in the end, for the dark lord. Expendable, no matter what he pretended, and what my father promised me every day as a boy. I’d like to know if there was anything in my childhood that wasn’t an utter lie.”

And so in between doubt and uncertainty and awkwardness and mistrust, Hermione’s rendition of Muggle Studies had begun. Slowly at first, and then gaining traction in a rush, facilitated by moments tucked into the time they were forced to spend together anyway, working on Order business. 

Explanations of plumbing and electricity were punctuated by a cab ride on a precious free weekend evening, or a Harrods trip on the way home involving muggle jeans and makeup. Draco was soon discovered to be an attentive listener, unnaturally quiet besides the few clever questions he asked in response to Hermione’s explanations. 

Over time, their trips expanded and coalesced, becoming something of a tradition among the entire Order as different members joined them in search of a couple hours of laughter before returning to war. To Hermione and Draco, it was already nearly a ritual: Draco would return from Death Eater business, disappear into Order headquarters for intelligence briefings, and then re-emerge into the kitchen. Leaning against the counter to make tea for them both— he had noticed the peculiar way she liked her drink— and offering his expertise on Hermione’s healing or potions questions, he would then receive a story or lesson or experience of Hermione’s fancy. When Draco’s betrayal was finally discovered by the Death Eaters and he began staying with the Order full-time, they’d go out on occasional weekends, after harrowing experiences purchasing potions ingredients from black markets and back-door loopholes. 

“I’d only just begun to get comfortable with muggle technology,” Draco says now, his smile still brilliant. “The fair… ” he pauses, searching for the right words. “It was one of the greatest miracles I’ve witnessed. Simultaneously terrifying and exhilarating, and that night… ” he pauses again, falters. Hermione waits patiently, curious. 

“That night was the night I really realized this war was worth fighting, you know?” His fingers twitch in front of her, twisting the Malfoy ring and slipping it on and off across knuckles. His only nervous habit, usually hidden away beneath the table or inside his pockets. “We went up that wheel, and I was looking over all of London, and thinking about how much more there was still to lose. How our families are all fucked up already but that letting him win would mean that the girl in the car with us would lose her mother, and that the man who sold us candy floss would lose all his grandchildren. 

“It just put things into perspective,” Draco tries to explain. He’s still fidgeting with the Malfoy ring, so Hermione reaches out to slip her fingers into his and stall the motion. “Here, finally, was something I thought maybe I could want to come back to year after year, but moreover that _millions_ of people were _already_ coming back to see, year after year, and _he_ was just going to destroy it.”

Draco slips a hand into Hermione’s curls, gently tugging them out of their tie to let them tumble across her shoulders sluggishly. “Before, I just wanted to live, and that night… That night, I thought about wanting to win, and about the things I’d do once we won. A better future, you know? And that future— it sounded fucking _glorious._ ” 

Their eyes meet, and her fingers tighten around his as he looks at her. This isn’t the first time they’ve talked about the future with one another, and the future he imagined that night couldn’t possibly have included anything to do with her, but now? Hermione knows what they’re both thinking of. A house, large enough for a library. Two rings, one for him and one for her. Three spare bedrooms, set aside for three constellation names. Four, five, six, seven, a progression of decades’ worth of starting mornings and ending arguments with _I love you._

“Glorious,” Hermione echoes, and leans over to kiss him. 

“What about you?” Draco asks. “What memory?” 

Hermione considers for a moment, but there’s really no competition for her favorite memory, not even by a long shot. Draco’s choice is because of its significance, not just its joy, but Hermione really can’t be bothered with the subtle nuances of memory-picking right now. “The same one as for my patronus,” she answers. 

They know each other’s patronus memories already; they exchanged them the very day Hermione taught Draco how to produce one. Draco’s is their first kiss, because according to him there will never be anything more wonderful than finding out that this, between them, could be more than just wishful thinking. (“I don’t _need_ a boy,” Hermione had explained, “seeing as they’re usually more trouble than they’re worth, and I’m great on my own,” until Draco had employed every Slytherin interrogation tactic to exist to drag out the truth that he was, indeed, definitely the one person who was worth every bit of trouble he created.) 

“Boring,” Draco says, but his smirk says otherwise. 

Hermione pulls the photo albums back to her and rifles through the pages, searching for the few pictures that the others had taken of them on the evening of Hermione’s twentieth birthday, the memory in question residing during that day’s hours. Draco halts her periodically as she flips, pausing to peruse the occasional pictures of the two of them grinning madly or flying into each other's arms on repeat, ordinary moments turned priceless with the resolute passing of time. 

Battles won and lost; photos from sick beds, delirious with the relief of simply not losing another, and photos from dinner tables, content to relish the moment and everything in the meal. The story of a war ongoing, chronicled in these pages. Finally, Hermione stops at the pictures in question. 

“Candles?” Draco is shown asking, and Hermione mouths the word along with him, now, remembering the moment perfectly. “Why in the world would you make a fuss about blowing out candles when you can just— ”

He plucked one candle off the table; with a murmur, it lit, and with another, it died. On his right, Hermione snickered, and now, Draco reaches out to brush the uninhibited smile on her photographed face before the image loops again. They’d been together for less than five months, then, and despite their fair share of well-articulated squabbles over everything from their healing responsibilities (“a handful does _not_ mean a dozen, how could the exact numerical valuation _not_ manifest an incredible impact upon the final result of the potion?”) to how they organized their books (Draco preferred it by color first, then author, arguing in favor of “optimized identification by visual association and memory stimulation,” while Hermione staunchly defended direct alphabetization by author), there had never been a moment in which their relationship had felt wrong, or could be considered cumbersome. 

And so that night, when there had a been a stray attack to attend to in the middle of eating cake— because of course, this was war, and the happiest memories were really just the ones in which even bad news couldn’t shake that feeling of bolstering freedom— Draco had made sure to find Hermione before he left with Harry and the others, already anticipating the night of pacing and sleeplessness she would have while the others were gone. 

Pressing her up against the wall, he had kissed her soundly (photographed from across the bustling room, courtesy of Ginny, they now laugh), and then pressed his gift to her into her hand. “In case I don’t get back before midnight, I still want you to be able to open it on your birthday,” he’d said. 

“Don’t be afraid, yeah? Don’t spend all of tonight worrying about the rest of us. Enjoy your birthday. Think about what you’ll want to do next year, and the year after that. We’ll make it out. This— ” he’d stopped, gestured with one hand behind him wildly, brushed her hair back, and kissed her again. Somehow, between all those things, Hermione had understood that he hadn’t just meant her, but the establishment as a whole: friends, jokes, arguments, birthdays, imperfections, even the _cause_ they were fighting for, the one his seven-year-old self would have scrambled to evacuate at all costs. 

“This will always be worth coming home to,” he’d said, and those words had become the bane of her patronus. Even on the nights when the colors grew dizzying and the ground spun underneath her feet, and the nights when some people _didn’t_ come home, didn’t make it out of the pandemonium they faced, Hermione thought of that sentence. The son of one of the most prominently pureblooded families in all of Wizarding England, once an arrogant, prejudiced, and evil boy who clung on to his father’s wickedness, had grown up to become a good man, one who was brave and quick and fiercely loyal to his belief that the Order’s mission was a worthy one. A Slytherin, Hermione often thought, could still make promises like a Gryffindor. 

So every time something went wrong, Hermione would at least remember that he loved her, despite everything. Desperately, she would hope that this bleak world they lived in still had one more miracle to spare. 

“Not a great habit to be having,” Draco now says, interrupting Hermione’s thoughts as he tilts his head at the pictures. “Always reliving the memories?” 

She sighs, flipping the albums shut again and picking her wand up to send them flying back to the bookshelves. He’s right, of course. It’s unlike Draco to be the one trying to lift Hermione’s spirits, rather than the other way around (another reason why she treasures the evening of her twentieth birthday so much), but this hypothetical experiment of bringing back memories— that’s all it can ever be. Hypothetical. 

That doesn’t stop Hermione from quietly hoping that perhaps soon there won’t be a need for unhealthy coping mechanisms like this one, that happy memories altogether separate from the backdrop of the war are on the horizon. 

Because in recent weeks, the filling of the albums has slowed, replaced by a flurry of other activities. Reconnaissance and planning efforts fill the conversation at every gathering; and meetings, endless strategy meetings, consume most of everyone’s waking hours. In turn, Hermione has thrown herself into brewing potions and studying spells with a near-vicious vigor that even her study schedule for the O.W.L.s didn’t feature. 

“I know,” Hermione admits. It’s a sign of how well they know each other that she acknowledges this. With Ron, she’s constantly pressured to maintain the brilliant, all-knowing image he constructed of her over a decade ago, defending her actions with arbitrary logic just to be right; with Harry, she’s constantly pressured to act infallibly strong, encouraging him to lead and to find bravery even when she has none. 

Draco understands, though. From his seat at the window, he’d drawled, “Slytherin, remember? All we do is pretend to be something that we’re not, for the sake of the people we love.” Frowning with simultaneous relief and despair, she’d asked him to please not ever pretend with her. “You’d better do the same,” he’d responded, as though that was some sort of threat. 

Now, his hand tightens around hers, rubbing the white scars on her fingertips left behind from the chandelier at the Malfoy-less Malfoy Manor. It’s a message of his gratitude for her willingness to be vulnerable, and also an acknowledgment of the frustration he feels in being unable to help her more. “How long do you think before Kingsley calls us?” Draco is left to ask. 

The safehouse has been empty for days now. Kingsley has been leading a series of missions to make his final notes on the perimeter of the Death Eaters’ properties, and Harry and Ron are in another townhouse on the other side of London. Tonight is the culmination of weeks of readying for battle by day and staring at photo albums by night: a final attack, a jigsaw of side schemes and foreign favors that is finally clicking together under the direction of Kingsley Shacklebolt and Remus Lupin and Minerva McGonagall. Leaving Hermione, Harry, Draco, and Ron behind for these last missions was worth several hours of argument, but Lupin’s quiet reminder that he wanted to be absolutely certain they would all be safe and ready for the final battle eventually won out. 

As a result, Kingsley is meant to call everyone to headquarters before midnight, the adults laying out the final instructions while Hermione and Draco distribute the stock of healing potions and explosive chemicals they’ve been experimenting with and brewing nonstop. 

The experimentation, too, is another reminder of how far Draco’s come, Hermione thinks. When Hermione had suggested the use of muggle explosives to mix with magical ingredients, Draco had hardly blinked. “A lesson on these bombs tonight, then?” he’d just suggested dryly. After weeks of charms spellwork and muggle chemistry, they’d designed explosives with far greater accuracy and timing than anything anyone had ever seen before— muggle or magical. 

“An hour?” Hermione guesses. “Less, maybe?” 

The clock on the wall reads just after six, but Hermione had heard from Harry, who had heard from Ginny, who had overheard her mother this morning: the surveillance was reportedly going smoother than expected and could finish slightly early. Hermione informs Draco of this now, having forgotten to let him know in the morning, and Draco snorts, diverting their conversation to a discussion of Harry’s plans to propose to Ginny and his paranoia at being discovered by her ahead of time. 

“Molly will have a field day,” Hermione says, as they laugh about where the wedding might be. Draco jokes about his idea to do it in the Room of Requirement, in honor of the place where just about everything exciting at Hogwarts ever happened. “Imagine her taking Ginny to check the venue— dress shopping is one thing, I can’t imagine Ginny ever being enthusiastic about making seating charts, or _floral arrangements,_ for that matter.” 

“Is that something you’d want?” Draco asks. “Drawing up the seating charts yourself, and running around to floral arrangement consultations?” _A full wedding?,_ he really means. _Even if your parents can’t be there to witness it?_

It’s been years since Hermione confronted the knowledge that her parents’ memories wouldn’t be restorable. She’d found the news on accident, almost; flipping through textbooks on the dark arts in order to do extra research with Draco, she’d found a side note on obliviation. _With great care and practice, obliviation is quite reversible,_ the book she’d read that summer years before had said, and so she’d studied the necessary methods beforehand and made notes for herself. That day, seated on the floor in the middle of the room, she’d read in shock that _research has shown that the effects of obliviation are irreversible after a span of approximately two years._

Draco had found her panicking in her own bedroom, throwing things together to go straight to Australia. They’d gone together, trying every method she’d thought up and then creating a dozen more, terrified of proving what they already knew was probably right to be their reality. Eventually, Hermione had turned away, falling into Draco’s arms not unlike the way she is sitting now. Nothing had worked, and so they had returned to England. 

Today, Hermione just shrugs, shoulders falling as she leans into Draco. “Yeah,” she says quietly, playing with loose threads in her sweater. “I’d be willing.” She looks back up at Draco’s face, meeting his eyes. “You’d help, right?” _You’re enough,_ she really means. _It’d be okay, so long as you’re there._

Draco pulls her closer. “My taste in the hydrangeas and peonies of this world is impeccable,” he agrees, as silver light swooshes through the air in front of them and Kingsley’s voice booms from the lynx. 

_Pack all your supplies,_ he says. _Meeting starts in thirty minutes. Entrance being watched. Apparate directly inside._

“Finally,” Draco says. Hermione groans and rises reluctantly, heading to the long kitchen counters. Most everything is packed already, just the last few salves and pastes left to bottle.

It’s only when everything is already done, their work completed in comfortable silence, and they are looking around the room one last time to see if they’ve missed anything, that Draco speaks up again. “If we were to do that,” he says, and Hermione has to pause to recollect what it is he’s referring to, “when do you think you’d want it to happen? Hypothetically,” he adds, like a hasty afterthought. 

Hermione looks at him in mild surprise, and then a grin tugs at the edge of her mouth. She’d expected Draco Malfoy to already have furnished a complete vision and timeline for their still entirely imaginary wedding, but based on the slight tension in his shoulders, he’s just as uncertain as she is about this. Perhaps he’s only familiar with pureblood society courting rituals and weddings, Hermione thinks; he knows her well enough to know that _those_ kinds of marriage procedures are definitely not to her taste. 

Their fingers tangle together as Draco shrugs on the last bag of supplies and Hermione prepares to apparate them. She looks up at him in response, staring at how the lines of worry etched into his cheeks can disappear so completely into the gentle wrinkles of a full smile. _You will always be worth coming home to,_ Hermione thinks, and then, out loud with a shrug of her shoulders, she says, “I don’t know. Whenever you can find a ring, perhaps?”


End file.
